I really doubt that you could point at anything I said and prove that it is a lie; as for looking at the kernel source yes it is big but alot of us learn from source better than lecture. But that is just the beginning....if you want to see how a database works you can look at the source, if you want to see how a top-notch webserver works, the source is there too. FOSS can offer some great educational opportunities at no more cost that some time and learning.
As for mounting a partition you never mentioned that before, you just said to slap in a live CD and away you go...I still would not advocate coding that way...for one thing you are stuck with the system and coding libs supplied by the live CD whereas with a normal installed system you can install them once and just start using them. The alternative that you suggest would say that you would need to remaster your live CD everytime you needed new libs/sdks installed...still doesn't qualify as an optimal dev environment to me...at least that is what my quarter century of coding is telling me...
Elysia; I would not suggest anyone "abandon" Windows; sure I haven't needed it in my home for over a decade now but at the end of the day I advocate learning as many different operating systems and dev tools as possible. No single OS is utopian, not Linux and certainly not Windows. However I will also state that knowing them both well will take you farther than just knowing one or the other...